REGINA — Organizers with the Cathedral Village Arts Festival are warning vendors after two newcomer artists were scammed out of $180 by fraudsters posing as festival staff online.
The scam surfaced when a woman emailed festival director Dawn Young after noticing something didn’t feel right.
“I was in the office and Dawn got an email from one of the two women who had been scammed,” said Paul Dechene, Communications Coordinator for the Cathedral Village Arts Festival. “Someone had posted a fake arts festival poster in a Facebook group for newcomers to Regina. They were asked to e-transfer money to book a booth at our street fair.”
After the initial payment, the scammer requested an additional $50 to $60 deposit, promising it would be refunded when the vendors arrived at the event to “hold their spot.”
“One of the women thought, hang on, this doesn’t sound like how a street fair would be run,” Dechene said. She went to the official website, found a legitimate email contact and reached out.
That quick thinking stopped the fraud from spreading further.
Dechene immediately tracked down the Facebook post, which came from an account with a generic name and minimal history. He publicly flagged it as fake and began filing a scam complaint with Facebook. Midway through the process, the post disappeared.
“You could just see it vanish,” he said.
The damage, however, had already been done. Two women lost a combined $180.
In response, the festival board voted to give both artists free booths at this year’s street fair.
“They’re exactly the kind of people we want at the festival,” Dechene said. “Newcomers to Regina. People who make their own crafts and want to share them with the community. It was tragic that the fake poster reached them before we did.”
The fraudulent email used was from a suspicious Gmail account. Dechene said that alone should raise red flags.
“We don’t take e-transfers through a Gmail account,” he said. “If you want to be a vendor, you apply through our website. There’s a form. One of our street fair coordinators contacts you directly. That’s it.”
He also noted the poster itself was a giveaway.
“It was clearly AI-generated. If you looked closely, it was junky. We hire artists from our own community to create our posters. We would never use AI for that.”
The fake email never once mentioned the Cathedral Village Arts Festival by name, instead referring vaguely to an event happening May 18 to 23.
“That tells you whoever was behind it didn’t know our festival and didn’t care to pretend very hard,” Dechene said.
This is not the first time scammers have targeted the festival or events hosted by the Cathedral Area Community Association. For several years, organizers say fraudulent accounts have appeared in Facebook comment sections claiming to have vendor spots available and urging people to send direct messages.
“I now have to put disclaimers on everything we post,” Dechene said. “We never sell vendor booths through Facebook comments. We never ask for payment through random accounts.”
A reverse image search of the fake poster revealed similar scams targeting craft fairs and markets across North America. Dechene said the scale of online fraud makes enforcement difficult.
“The first time this happened, I went to the fraud unit with the Regina Police Service and made a statement,” he said. “They need to know about it, but these accounts disappear. They’re not real people. It’s an enormous problem.”
So far, no additional victims have come forward, leading organizers to believe early intervention prevented further losses.
The timing is especially frustrating. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Cathedral Village Arts Festival, one of Regina’s most beloved cultural traditions.
Launched in 1990 as a grassroots celebration of arts and community in the Cathedral neighbourhood, the festival has grown into a week-long event featuring free live music, visual art, theatre, food vendors and a sprawling outdoor street fair that signals the unofficial start of summer in Regina. Thousands pack 13th Avenue each spring to browse handmade goods, watch performers and reconnect after a long prairie winter.
“It’s that first festival of the summer where the whole community comes together,” Dechene said. “There’s free entertainment for an entire week. It’s about celebrating local artists and who we are as a neighbourhood and a city.”
Organizers say legitimate vendor applications are only accepted through the festival’s official website. There are still limited booth spaces available, but they are filling quickly.
Dechene hopes the scam serves as both a warning and a reminder.
“Go through our website. Make sure you’re talking to one of us directly,” he said. “And if something feels off, trust that instinct.”
For two artists who nearly lost more than just money, the festival is making it right. For everyone else, organizers want one thing clear: if it’s not coming directly from Cathedral Village Arts Festival channels, it’s not real.
As Regina prepares to celebrate 35 years of art, music and community this May, the message is simple. Support local artists. Support local festivals. And don’t let scammers steal the spotlight.
